


Ad Astra

by satonawall



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 12:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4221708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satonawall/pseuds/satonawall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmates!AU: Brittany gets the name of her soulmate some weeks before Santana does. Santana wishes it didn’t weigh so hard on her, but maybe there’s still hope</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ad Astra

“I don’t know,” Brittany said. “It sounds like rain but the sun might just be getting crafty. I’m sure I saw it knitting once.”

Santana laughed. “I don’t want to go out anyway. Let’s just stay here.”

Brittany settled her arm more comfortably around Santana’s waist. “Okay.”

Santana moved her hand to cover Brittany’s, lacing their fingers together. This was good, she thought. This was wonderful, and great, and all she’d ever wanted.

This was also, most likely, the last time she was going to have this. Brittany’s birthday was tomorrow. It would make sense to make the most of it.

“Cuddle for a moment and do it again?” she asked, her other hand trailing meaningfully up Brittany’s side.

Brittany pouted at her, but it wasn’t one of those pouts that said no. “I thought we could go to the mall and look at cat toys for Lord Tubbington.”

Santana grinned at her quickly before the corners of her mouth would have time to droop downwards. Fun as browsing through pet stores with Brittany was, it was also something they could do the day after tomorrow.

This wasn’t.

“Maybe some other time.” She leaned down to press a kiss against Brittany’s collarbone. “I think we weren’t quite done here yet.”

Brittany giggled, and they barely had time to put their clothes back on before Brittany’s mother came home a few hours later.

Santana managed to hold onto her smile until after Brittany had enthusiastically waved her goodbye and gone back into the house.

It was a goodbye, she thought. Not to Brittany, but to how things had been.

Her tears didn’t quite manage to wait until after she got home.

—

Brittany wasn’t at school the following day. It was customary, of course, to stay at home the day you got your mark, waiting for it to appear, but somehow it felt like a personal affront.

She hoped it was a girl, at least, Santana thought sullenly as she glared down at her biology pop quiz. It could go either way for Brittany, and logically Santana would lose her just as surely, it didn’t matter to whom, but-

It would hurt like nothing had ever hurt before to know for sure that Brittany’s soulmate was someone else, but maybe it would hurt just a tiny bit less to know that at least it wasn’t a boy.

But even thinking of Brittany with another girl (Santana’s imagination dressed her up in ridiculous hippie clothes and gave her long, flowing blonde hair, even longer and blonder than Brittany’s) felt like she was purposefully stabbing herself in the heart.

She wrote another lacklustre answer to the quiz. What did anything matter anymore, now that it was already two o’clock and Brittany probably already had at least someone else’s first name etched into her skin?

—

The following day, she almost didn’t go to school, and the only reason she did was because her mother was working from home that day and she couldn’t think of a good excuse.

She did, however, make sure she left home so late that she barely made it to homeroom and thus didn’t have to see Brittany before classes started.

They didn’t have any shared classes in the morning, and Santana knew Brittany’s schedule and habits almost better than her own, so it was easy enough to avoid her. That was, of course, until lunch. They usually sat together with the glee club, and not only did Santana not want to break the habit and sit with the Cheerios, it would have been baffling and probably made Brittany sad. Even if they weren’t soulmates, just the thought made her stomach tie itself up in knots.

Brittany was already there, talking to Tina about rainbows, when Santana dropped her tray on the table. They were the only ones there, so she couldn’t sit away from Brittany without being weird. Brittany just beamed at her before going back to her explanation to Tina, and Santana began stabbing at her fries without appetite.

The table was already full when she had to talk to Brittany the first time.

“I know they said we can’t talk about the marks until we can show them side by side,” Brittany whispered in her ear as everyone else’s attention was focused on Kurt loudly lecturing Finn about something to do with laundry detergent or soufflé-making or whatever, “But I’m still really happy.”

Santana didn’t sigh into her salad, but she probably did stab it harder than was strictly necessary.

“That’s great,” she said. Brittany’s smile dropped a little, so Santana forced herself to smile and add, “I’m really happy for you.”

Maybe it would become easier once she got her own mark, Santana thought. Maybe it was just that it hurt because Brittany knew for sure that she had someone out there who was definitely meant for her, and all Santana had was a now-probably-ex-not-girlfriend who’d just got her mark and was really happy about it.

It would all be better once she got hers, too. It had to be. She could hardly take two weeks of feeling like this; the thought that it would not go away after that was simply unbearable.

—

She managed to avoid Brittany at school the following day (the feeling didn’t go away when Brittany was nowhere to be seen, but at least it was more of a dull ache instead of a constant throbbing pain), but in the afternoon, it was hard to avoid someone who was right next to you in the pyramid in cheer practice.

“You said you’d go to the mall with me to look at cat toys for Lord Tubbington,” Brittany said while they were all pretending to listen to Coach Sylvester.

She couldn’t exactly get away from the situation without making most of the Cheerios tumble down to the ground (and even if she had done that, she couldn’t have left the football field fast enough to avoid being yelled at by Coach Sylvester), so she mumbled, “Okay. Today after practice?”

“Great,” Brittany said, but she no longer sounded as enthusiastic about it.

—

“I don’t think there’s anything here that he’d like,” Brittany said as they looked around in the animal section. “Maybe we should go look at the fondue set again.”

“Hmmm.” Santana didn’t know what else to say.

Eventually, Brittany bought the fondue set and they had frozen yoghurt. Santana was quiet as Brittany went on about how she thought Lord Tubbington might be planning an illicit arctic expedition, and she could barely muster up the smile as they waved goodbye in the parking lot.

Usually, she’d have asked Brittany to come over, but usually when Brittany came over after school it was to make out. That was no longer an option.

—

“You will get over this time of blues in your life,” Rachel said without being asked anything as she sat down next to Santana in calculus. “Finding out your high school sweetheart is not your soulmate is a dramatic, but character-building experience.”

“Is that why you still make sad eyes at Finn while he’s not looking?”

Rachel deflated for a moment, but then seemed to square her shoulders again.

“Heartbreak like this will only add to our artistic expression,” Rachel said. Santana kind of wanted to punch her.

“Well good for you, but that’s not going to help me much with my pre-law degree.”

“I still think you should-”

“Leave her alone, Rachel,” Quinn said from behind them.

Against all odds, Rachel actually listened to her and started babbling about their homework for class. Santana relaxed gradually.

If only Quinn had taken her own advice, though; she cornered Santana after class. Well, caught up with her in the hallway, but that practically meant cornering anyway, right?

“Maybe you should actually talk to Brittany. That would probably help your heartbreak a lot more than listening to Rachel’s advice.”

“Well,” Santana said, clutching her books tighter against herself as if they could protect her from Quinn’s gaze, “I’m not taking Rachel’s advice, so you can stop worrying about that.”

“I didn’t worry about that,” Quinn said and put her hand on Santana’s arm. “But, just to remind you, I’ve been friends with you and Brittany since middle school.”

“I know.” Santana glared at her. “I was there.”

“I’m just saying,” Quinn let her hand drop, “you should talk to Brittany. I know both of you really well.”

Santana glared after her long after she’d left Santana stand alone in the middle of the hallway.

—

Just to spite Quinn (or so she told herself), she avoided Brittany for the rest of that day, too. Brittany wasn’t next to her in the pyramid this time, so not even cheer practice broke Santana’s streak.

The following day worked like that, too, and then it was the weekend. Santana was mentally prepared to ignore Brittany’s texts and Facebook messages and whatever else was necessary, but it turned out Brittany didn’t send her any.

“Are you excited for next Friday, Santana?” her mother asked her at dinner Saturday evening. “It’s going to be a big day for you.”

“Hmh,” Santana said and speared a Brussels sprout.

Her mother gave her a concerned look but wisely chose not to push, choosing a different topic after concluding the present one with, “I’m glad they’re chosen by fate, so I know she can handle you in all of your moods.”

—

On Monday, Brittany wasn’t waiting at Santana’s locker even though Santana was early and Brittany’s car was in the parking lot.

If she pretended hard enough, the clang of metal against metal when Santana slammed her locker shut wasn’t quite as transparent as it felt, right?

“Did you and Brittany have a fight over the weekend or something?” Mercedes asked, appearing by the lockers and giving Santana a look.

“No,” Santana said. It was true. You had to speak to each other to fight. “Why would you ask that?”

Mercedes shook her head. “Well, you’re banging lockers like that and Brittany’s crying in the bathroom and telling everyone to leave if they ask her what’s wro-”

Santana’s heart stopped.

“Brittany’s crying in the bathroom?”

“Yeah,” Mercedes said. “That’s what I came here to tell you. Figured you’d be the best person to figure out what that’s about and make it better.”

Santana barely heard the end of that sentence. She was already well on her way to the bathroom.

A very nonplussed sophomore was just leaving the bathroom when Santana arrived. She could hear Brittany’s voice on the inside saying, “You can use the one near the gym, the ghost is much nicer than everyone makes her out to be” as she stopped the door from closing after the sophomore.

“Brittany?” she said hesitantly, following the sound of sobbing to the last stall and knocking on the door. “It’s me.”

There was a silence - even the sobbing had stopped - until Brittany said quietly, “Go away, Santana.”

“No, I won’t,” Santana said, her voice sounding a lot more convincing than she felt. “You’re sad, how could I go away?”

“It didn’t seem to stop you this weekend,” Brittany muttered, but Santana was a lot more focused on the two steps and the sound of the lock turning.

She stepped back to let the door open of its own volition, and got her first look at Brittany in a few days.

Brittany looked just as she usual did, except that all her general up-beatness was gone. Her gaze seemed to be fixated on the floor as if it didn’t have the energy to look up, her arms were hanging limply at her sides and even her ponytail wasn’t as perky as usual.

Santana really just wanted to give her a hug and reassure her that everything would be okay, whatever it was that was bothering Brittany, but her guilt over her avoidance of Brittany stopped her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, wondering if it would at least be okay to take Brittany’s hand.

Brittany let out a deep breath.

“My soulmate doesn’t want to be with me.”

Santana swallowed, squashing the happiness hearing Brittany say that awoke in her and feeling incredibly guilty that it had ever existed at all. She should be a better friend than that, right? It wasn’t Brittany’s fault that fate didn’t agree with Santana about who Brittany should be with.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” she said, not quite daring to take Brittany’s hand, not after that. “Do you even know that person?”

Brittany nodded, her head hanging so that Santana couldn’t even properly see her eyes.

“And have you talked to them about it?”

“She doesn’t want to talk about it,” Brittany said.

With Brittany so downcast, not even the knowledge that she wouldn’t have to see Brittany abandon her for a boy could make Santana even the tiniest bit happier.

“Does she have her mark yet? Maybe she doesn’t and just doesn’t know that you’re her soulmate yet? It could all just be a misunderstanding, you know. Who wouldn’t want you for her soulmate?”

Brittany moved her foot an inch to the left, staring down at it like it was the most intriguing sight she’d ever laid her eyes on.

“You don’t.”

Santana’s heart clenched. Suddenly, uninvited, the memory of the card Brittany had given Kurt to give to his father after the heart attack came to her mind.

Was this how it felt to love too much?

“Well,” she said, determined to make her words cheerful despite every single one feeling like shards of glass in her mouth, “it’s a good thing I’m not your soulmate then.”

Slowly, Brittany looked up, and finally Santana could see into her eyes.

Her heart felt like it stopped for the second time.

They looked at each other for what felt like an eternity, until the warning bell rang and shattered the moment.

“I’m not your soulmate, right?” Santana whispered. She wasn’t, she had to believe she wasn’t, if there was any chance that it was not true she could not believe it, because thinking she had Brittany only to realise she didn’t would be more than she would ever be able to take.

“I can’t force you to be if you don’t want to,” Brittany said, her voice breaking. “But I have your name on my back so I guess I’m not getting another one if you say no.”

Santana stared at her, but Brittany didn’t take it back. Finally finding her ability to move again, she made a very undignified noise and threw herself at Brittany, almost tipping them both down onto the bathroom floor.

“I thought you weren’t mine,” she said into the crook of Brittany’s neck. “I thought you weren’t mine and I couldn’t bear the thought of it.”

Slowly, more hesitantly than Santana would have liked, Brittany’s hands came up to rest on Santana’s waist.

“Does that mean you actually want to be my soulmate?” Brittany asked hopefully, and her tone just about broke Santana’s heart again.

This heartbreak she could fix, though.

“Yes,” she said, pulling Brittany closer even as she had to move her head away to be able to look

Brittany in the eye, to hopefully show her how serious Santana was. “Always. I’ve always wanted to be your soulmate.”

Brittany smiled, and Santana’s heart felt whole again.

“You’ve always been my soulmate,” she said. “I knew a lot before they put it on my skin. I thought you did, too.”

Santana swallowed. “I think I did, too. But I just couldn’t believe that fate would think I’d be worth someone as great as you.”

“Well fate put us together, so clearly she’s a lot smarter than that.”

“Yeah,” Santana said, resting her forehead against Brittany’s. “It seems that way.”

—

On Friday, Santana stayed at home to wait for her mark to form. By midday, it was suitably well-formed for her to send a picture of it to her soulmate, who proceeded to send her twenty rainbow smileys and at least as many exclamation points before turning up on Santana’s doorstep.

As they managed to pull away from each other just long enough to dart up the stairs towards Santana’s room, Santana spared a moment to think about how at least one of her wishes from the previous week had come true.

Finding out who her soulmate was had certainly made all the difference in her mood. She just hadn’t been able to imagine just how large a difference.

It was better like this, she thought as Brittany pulled her into her room. So, so much better.


End file.
